Sprouted Brown Rice: Gentle on the Stomach & Nutritious

I’ve had this love/hate relationship with brown rice for as long as I can remember. I love the taste, however I hate how I makes me feel (bloated with indigestion). Sorry; I needed to get a little personal because I wanted to be clear about my symptoms after eating brown rice. I have a hunch that I’m not the only one impacted in this manner.

Recently, I had stopped making rice because the discomfort was just too much.

Then, I stumbled upon sprouted brown rice, also known as GABA brown rice (for the amino acid gamma-aminobutyric acid). What I have read is that it has a much higher amount of gamma-aminobutyric acid (which helps lower blood pressure, improves kidney function, and reduces sleeplessness) and a much lower amount of phytic acid (inhibits nutrient absorption of calcium, iron, zinc and magnesium and may cause indigestion).

Sprouted brown rice can be purchased in health food stores, but it’s really expensive. This is just one brand, but you can see the cost.

Or, you can make your own – which is what I did.

I used Lundberg Organic Short Grain Brown Rice. I buy this at a natural foods store in the bulk section.

Steps to Sprout Brown Rice:

1. Measure out how much you want to sprout. (You can cook it all at once and use or freeze, or you can refrigerate it after sprouting, but cook it within a couple days.)

2. Add it to a sprouting jar. I bought mine at a local health food store – Arrowroot in Bryn Mawr for $5.

3. Rinse the rice in the sprouting jar, then fill up the jar with filtered water.

4. Let sit overnight, then drain the next morning. Rinse the rice and turn the jar upside down on a cloth to catch any remaining water at an angle so the mesh lid can still get air.

5. Let sit the entire day (you can rinse at the end of the day if you want, but you don’t have to).

6. The next morning rinse again and by the evening or next day you should see tails on your rice, which means it has sprouted and is ready to be rinsed again and cooked.

See the tails? This is right before I emptied the rice from the sprouting jar.

When you are ready to cook the rice, you can cook it as you normally would. I used a sauce pan on the stovetop, but you could use a rice cooker or a pressure cooker. Since this rice has been soaked and absorbed some of the water, it requires less water to cook and a shorter cooking time. I had two cups of sprouted rice and used two cups of water. I brought to a light boil, then simmered for about 20 minutes, took the lid off to simmer another five minutes, then let it sit for 5 minutes.

I am no expert in this process. I have pieced together information from a lot of different web sites while I was doing research. I left the rice on my countertop to sprout and had no issues. Everything went just how I had hoped and I think I was successful. My house was probably 70-75 degrees.

Now, here’s the best part: I have eaten the rice three times – once right after it was cooked with dulse flakes, kelp flakes and gomasio, once with a vegetable coconut curry and once in a bean burger.

I did not experience any gastrointestinal upset.

No bloating at all! Victory!!!

I am elated, not only because I can comfortably eat brown rice again, but also because of all the extra nutrients I am getting from the increase in amino acids and reduction in phytic acids.

Reheating Rice Tip: I learned this awesome tip from a fellow 30 Day Vegan “classmate”…use a steamer basket to reheat rice just as if you would steam broccoli. Nothing gets stuck and it provides the perfect amount of moisture and heat to the rice!

I’m excited to move on to quinoa and chickpeas (which also hurt my tummy), but in the meantime all my rice is gone and I need to sprout more!

If you have any sprouting tips, I’d love to hear…or if want to try sprouting your own rice, please stop back and tell me how it goes!

This is so awesome! I’ve found sprouted brown rice for fairly cheap at a local Mennonite grocery store. (But I know most people don’t have access to that.)

What other things have you tried sprouting? Can you sprout flour? I buy organic sprouted spelt flour which is at least $5 more than the regular kind. It would be great if I didn’t have to keep paying that difference.

Thank you Val! I have sprouted legumes, as well as seeds like alfalfa/broccoli/etc to create sprouts. The digestibility of chickpeas improve dramatically for me when I sprout them. I definitely think you can make sprouted flour. I have made quinoa flour before from dried quinoa and, although I haven’t made sprouted flour, I would think it’s a similar process. Soak the grain/seed, sprout it, dehydrate it to dry it, then pulverize it into flour using a grain mill or blender dry container. I’m certainly no expert, though, so you may want to do a google search on it just to make sure I’m not missing a step. Good luck! :)

One method I have used with the most success is using a salad spinner to sprout in. Just fill it with water and seeds, soak over night, lift the basket/strainer with all the seeds/sprouts dump the water and either put a towel of the salad spinner lid back on(cracked especially if it’s hot), than let it sit in there wet for half the day. Rinsing is a snap you just pour in some filtered water, swish it around, than lift out the basket and dump the water, rinse the container and you are good to go. Plus, when it’s time to dry, you just pull that cord and spin out the water. Pretty cool. It has worked for me, let me know what you think.

This is a great idea, Chris. Thanks for sharing it here. With your method you could sprout a larger quantity, which is great for large families, or if you want to sprout the rice and refrigerate it for cooking later in the week or the following week. I find that even though I use a half gallon mason jar, the rice only lasts us two meals.

Hi! I came across your post and decided to give it a try. I have nice tails on my rice, but there is a kind of weird smell associated with the jar… it’s not a strong smell, but I am concerned to eat the rice- thinking I may have left it in the jar too long and now there’s some sort of bacteria growing… not sure what to do. Do you think it’s safe to cook and eat?

Your tails sound perfect. How long have you been sprouting them? Are you in a humid climate? There is a different smell to the rice after sitting out. I don’t know what yours smells like, but mine smells slightly sweet (although that may be the rice; I use Lundberg short grain brown), sour, and ever so slightly musty. If it’s a pungent moldy smell and you see mold in the jar, then I would ditch it.

the EASYSPROUT (sproutamo.com) seems to be the easiest sprout method. addresses the hassles of repeat rinsing and timing. worth looking into. Then cook in auto rice cooker, non-stick induction unit. Why not just eat the uncooked sprouts? Why cook? Anything lost by cooking the sprouts? Like killing enzymes? Likely the rice is still a bit hard and requires cooking even though freeing up sprout nutrients.

Thanks for your comments, Tim; I will look into the Easysprout. I think the uncooked sprouted rice is a little too crunchy for me to eat without cooking it, but I think if you wanted you could eat it uncooked. I have a Zojirushi rice cooker that cooks rice perfectly…even the sprouted rice which is a little softer. I cook it on the brown rice setting with the same amount of water as rice that hasn’t been sprouted. Works great.